To grow your brand, narrow your audience target
How Yeti, North Face, and Harley Davidson use a tip of the spear strategy to grow their base
Part of marketing campaign development is defining your target audience. I’ve noticed that brands often get cold feet when it comes to targeting a very specific customer segment.
“If we target [specific segment], will we limit ourselves to only this audience in the future?”
It’s a natural concern, especially if you are responsible for bringing in sales. Wouldn’t you want to target everyone? But targeting everyone is a recipe for vanilla products and marketing that ends up exciting no one. On the contrary, focusing in on one specific audience group expands your audience.
Take Yeti. Yeti is a brand of outdoorsy goods including coolers, insulated drink ware, waterproof bags and apparel. Since its founding in 2006, the brand has grown to a $3.7 Billion+ market cap on $1.8B+ in revenue.
A WSJ article mentioned that even the Kardashians are Yeti fans after Kim Kardashian shared a photo of her Yeti cooler on Instagram Stories. Would Yeti take advantage of this? It could be huge media value to partner with someone like Kim. But Yeti chose not to act on it:
“It’s kind of weird for a marketing-brand person to say this…but a lot of my job is pulling the brand back, trying to ensure that we are true to ourselves without being a fad.”
— Yeti VP Marketing, Paulie Dery, WSJ
Why didn’t Yeti partner with the Kardashians? The Kardashians might have a large following, but they aren’t the audience target. Yeti is a brand for fishermen, hunters, and outdoorsy types. Fishermen are a discerning bunch — requiring high quality products that can survive travel, all-day activity, water logging, et cetera. To be associated with them doesn’t mean you are only limiting yourself to fishermen. It means you are setting the bar incredibly high. If fishermen approve, then I do as well. The Kardashians might have broad brand awareness… but they don’t offer strong associations for the quality of outdoors products.
The tip of the spear targeting strategy
Instead of going for the broadest audience, Yeti is following a tip of the spear strategy, designing for their most discerning customers. By focusing there, you actually widen your potential audience:
If you target fishermen, then everyone less discerning than fisherman (most customers) are in the market
If you market yourself as a cooler brand ‘for everyone,’ then you limit your customer base to those who are as discerning or less than the average person
Harley Davidson is another tip of the spear brand.
They market their motorcycles as rugged adventure machines for those who escape the board room and live life on the edge. Yet, in Harvard Business School professor Youngme Moon’s book Different, she mentions that Harley Davidson probably has more customers who practice law than who rebel against it.
That’s fine. The white-collar customer that Harley Davidson serves isn’t buying a Harley to live out their life at the office. They have that life already. They are buying a Harley to buy a fantasy. They are buying the fantasy of the tip of the spear customer. With that sharp fantasy in mind, Harley Davidson opens up the entire world of white collar employees to be their audience.
Finding your tip of the spear customer
What makes a tip of the spear customer unique is that they are discerning. These are the people that will anchor your brand as the brand for [x].
Consider a big market: new parents. I have read many research reports that teach marketers about marketing to today’s ‘busy, on the go mom.’ She’s on the go in many decks that’s for sure. But the tip of the spear is the most discerning new parent. The most opinionated. The expecting parents who read every label on every product and who threw out anything that could be remotely dangerous to their future child. Design for them, and you’ll set the bar high enough to design for many parents. Design for the ‘typical’ expecting parent, and your resulting product will be typical as well.
To find your tip of the spear customer, segment your market for discernment. Who are the customers with high expectations, and why? Note: there are many ways to be discerning. In coffee, it might be about bean quality and roasting. But discerning could also be about time and convenience. The UK’s new ‘Flat white or f*ck off’ brand fits the latter. If you have 15 minutes? Sure, wait in line at the 3rd wave cafe with onsite roasting. If you have 30 seconds? Grab a flat white, it’s the only thing we’re making.
The same goes in fashion. Sure, The North Face might sell puffer coats to everyone. But the brand is built on its association with the most discerning customers: the mountaineers, the explorers, the streetwear stylists. Design for them, and you will seduce the broader audience into your world.
When you consider your brand, who is your tip of the spear customer? What would they say about you?
As a side-note: if you are looking to identify and market to your tip of the spear customers, get in touch with me at BoF Advisory.
flat white or fuck off is so funny and unique. Thank you for the great article!
This is a great article! Arc'teryx is a recent example of "tip of spear" customers bringing a product to the masses.